This morning, while unremarkable, seemed to fly by at record speed. My office was closed today with the understanding that everyone would work from home. So I planned to work on some projects while the children watched too much TV and pushed each other down the stairs. I’m kidding of course – at least about the stairs – but I really did need to stay plugged in and couldn’t take a full vacation day. I decided that if it looked like I wouldn’t get anything done, I’d just have to officially take the day off, but sneak in work when I could.

Miraculously – the children were happy to just play with each other, and spent a good hour “marching” around the first floor in a parade that seemed to have something to do with the Sister Suffragette song from Mary Poppins. And string. I’m still not sure what the string had to do with anything.

I had planned to take them out to lunch so they’d have at least one activity outside of the house. But it was snowing and I didn’t know what that would mean for the roads.

Nothing, apparently – but the upshot of all of this independent indoor playtime was that I didn’t get to tire them out as I had planned. And when nap time for the twins rolled around, they were none too thrilled.

I tried reading them books (our usual wind down activity), but no one wanted to sit still. So I gave up and just put them in their cribs with the expectation that they’d do some screaming before they actually fell asleep. This isn’t so unusual, but of course, they picked today to learn that they have the ability to escape.

George has known how to climb out of his crib for a while now. I discovered this one night when I rolled over in bed to find him standing there looking at me. But it didn’t happen again, and I hoped that he would be like Oliver and lose interest in the activity almost immediately (seriously, it was great – even though Oliver knew how to climb out, he NEVER did).

Today was the day though… And not only did George climb out of his bed, he showed Eleanor how to do it as well. Within a few minutes of settling down with Oliver, the Little Einsteins and my computer, the twins wandered into the room. As if it was all an unfortunate misunderstanding – one we would never speak of again.

Nice try! I tossed them right back in and said “too bad, so sad – go to sleep.” I didn’t actually say that, but my tone was very clear.

As soon as I arrived back downstairs, I heard the unmistakable sound of two little pairs of feet hitting the floor. I went upstairs, met them at their door as they were exiting, and calmly escorted them back to bed (which is code for threw their little asses back in the clinker).

I’ve been through this with Oliver on vacation before (he had no compunction with escaping from the pack n’ play) and knew that they would continue to defy me. So I decided that I would allow it as long as they played quietly in their room. I couldn’t make them sleep – but I could make them have quiet time.

After listening to the pitter patter of little feet for about 15 minutes, I decided my plan sucked and that I’d better go put them back into their cribs. They really do need naps and I didn’t want to face an evening alone with them if they were going to be sleep deprived monsters.

I arrived to find them happily pulling apart the blinds. Eleanor, whom we tend to think of as the brains in the operation could tell I was serious about what George obviously considered “all this nap malarkey,” and submitted willingly to the inevitable. George on the other hand was outraged that I would put him back into the cage that he had already rejected twice. He even threw a leg over the railing and screamed the equivalent of toddler obscenities at me. We then engaged in a silent face off – his rage vs. my parental authority – for a minute or two. This could have gone on indefinitely if I didn’t hear Oliver sound the alarm downstairs: “UH OH -PEE PEE!“

I should probably explain that even though Oliver is fast approaching age four, and has been potty trained since last summer, he still wants me to help him pull down his pants. For the most part, I attribute this to habit. But it should also be noted that he is not particularly slim through the hips and if hard pressed for time, may have trouble getting his pants down before it’s too late. And he does tend to put things off until the last minute, so it’s understood in my house that when Oliver yells “uh oh – pee pee!” that means “run, do not walk – this is not a drill – I repeat this is not a drill! “

I narrowed my eyes, repositioned George inside the crib railing and firmly admonished him to stay put. I flew down the stairs and arrived in the powder room to find that I was too late. Said pee pee was entirely outside of the toilet.

Oliver is generally very good about not having accidents, so we don’t give him a hard time about it. I responded to his defeated “uh oh – pee pee” with my usual pat on the head and promise that “we’ll fix it, it’s okay.“

Once Oliver and the powder room were put to rights, I took a quick peek up the stairs to make sure I didn’t see toddlers dismantling the linen closet. No sign of activity – but I did hear a fair bit of wailing. One voice only, and high pitched enough for me to easily identify as George. Thankfully, it was muffled, indicating a face firmly (and irately) pressed into the crib mattress. So he seemed to be resigned to his fate.

Ultimately, they did sleep. But George was up again in 45 minutes, crying for me. At least Eleanor had a normal nap. Regardless – everyone went to bed an hour early tonight. Since they have no concept of telling time yet, I can usually trick them into this on the days they stay at home.

A few random things about today:

George has been talking about skoppa ball for a while, and I just realized that he’s saying “basketball.”

Eleanor has decided that she’s from Minnesota and now says “oh ya!” whenever an affirmative is required.

Oliver only wore pants for a cumulative ten minutes today.

“Renesmee” is the most ridiculous name I’ve ever heard in my life (you have to be at least halfway through the fourth Twilight book to understand this).

I opened a wine bottle at 5:30 p.m.

I try to limit the potty training references since I have some readers without kids – and one of the perks to not having children is NOT having to spend your day talking about poop. So I’ll warn you now that it IS going to come up in this one. And it’s not going to be pretty.

On Monday evening, I arrived home alone with the kids. Chris had to drive separately that day, and as usual, he had metro problems delaying him by at least an hour. Now, I am home with alone with the kids quite a bit since Chris has to travel for work. But I’ve been finding it increasingly more complicated since the twins ceased to be blobs (that’s right all you Angelina haters – babies do start out as BLOBS) and have joined their older brother in his daily mission to make me a lunatic.

Actually, it’s been a while since anyone would call George and Eleanor “blobs” – but in the recent past, they were far more sedentary. Approaching their second birthday, they are now a force to be reckoned with, and taking your eyes off of them for more than a minute can result in nothing short of global thermonuclear war. Or at least a toilet paper trail from the bathroom that circles the first floor ten times.

The first half hour was a whirlwind of the usual chaos – a blur of kids playing, crying and climbing on furniture while I tried to make dinner, get the daycare bag emptied and start lunches for the following day. It’s impossible for me to remember the exact sequence of events up until the first minor crisis – but that that pretty much sums it up.

Once everyone was busy eating dinner and watching (surprise, surprise) yet another Wiggles DVD, I ran downstairs to change a load of laundry. Suddenly, I could hear Oliver calling to me, “Mommy! Mommy!” But it didn’t sound like he was upset, so I yelled, “just a minute” a few times until I was done. When I came upstairs, I realized that he was calling me to let me know that he had to go potty. He is really only 75% potty trained and still needs help getting through the process. So all I could do was hustle him into the bathroom as quickly as possible and hope that he could at least “finish” on the potty.

Though I was fairly sure he was done, I settled him on the toilet anyway and then ran to answer the phone. It was Chris. He was calling to let me know that he was still stuck on the metro and would get back to me once he was in his car. At this point, my half naked son walked into the kitchen to announce that he wanted ice cream. I asked if he was finished on the potty and then realized that not only was he finished, but he had the subject matter smeared all over his rear end (must have happened when I was pulling down his pull up). I instructed him to “stay right there” (which he didn’t) while I ran for the wipes. Then the phone started ringing again. I ignored it.

While I was cleaning off my three year old, I heard little voices coming from the bathroom. Great! Now the twins were in there, and most likely throwing things into the toilet. After another directive for Oliver to “stay there” (which he didn’t) I ran to find the twins and was relieved to see that they were only trying to climb onto the sink and not anywhere near the toilet. “Okay – everybody out!”

Once I got Oliver clean and busy with an activity, I saw that it was time for the twins’ bath. They raced up the stairs yelling “water!” and happily scampered into the kids’ bathroom. While simultaneously running the water, getting the twins undressed and blocking them from the tub until they were in fact naked, I saw that I was going to have a big problem on my hands… George must have run into his bedroom at some point, and was now clutching his blankie.

George is obsessed with his blankie, and I spend quite a bit of time tricking him into letting go of it so I can throw it upstairs while he’s distracted. I thought I had accomplished this when we got home, but my efforts were foiled by his wily reconnaissance. Now “Linus” wanted to bring the blankie into the tub with him. He is a toddler, and neither willing nor able to listen to reason. And since his current vocabulary consists of “car, truck, train, bus, more and thank you,” there was no point in trying to engage him in discussion about it. I had to forcibly remove the blanket and put him into the water kicking and screaming.

Eleanor splashed happily while George wailed and tried to climb out. I just washed him off quickly and then set him free to reunite with the blankie. Knowing that he had left the bathroom and could, that very minute be peeing all over the second floor, I rushed through Eleanor’s scrubbing. George and his blankie returned within minutes and I was just in time to stop him from throwing the paperback that he was aiming at the water. This was the final signal for bath time to be over, and against Eleanor’s vehement protestations, I pulled the plug. Within seconds I had two naked toddlers in Oliver’s room (where we have all of the bedtime books). One was crying (Eleanor) and one was trying to sneak out the door (George). I closed the door, placed myself in front of it and started stuffing them into their pajamas.

At this point, Oliver decided to come see what all of the commotion was about and tried to open the door. After a few seconds, I realized that he couldn’t get in, and that’s when it hit me: the door was LOCKED. The previous owners installed the door knob to Oliver’s bedroom so that it locked from the outside. I gratefully took advantage of this when we moved Oliver to his toddler bed, and found it comforting to know that I could lock the door and not worry about him wandering the house while I slept. But it never occurred to me that I could get locked in with him on the OUTSIDE.

Never one to panic, I responded to Oliver’s increasing anxiety with comforting promises that I would “fix it” and a lot of the ever popular, “in just a minute.” All the while, I was running through possible action plans. Climbing out the window was not an option since it would be a three story drop, but I thought a neighbor might be outside. So I opened the window and started calling for help. No dice. Everyone was inside their air conditioned homes.

Meanwhile, Eleanor sensing the terror in Oliver’s cries to get in, started crying even louder – which in return increased Oliver’s anxiety. George was furious that I had closed the window (because, you know – that was so much fun), and started crying as well. Great – now I had thee screaming children.

I considered trying to break the door down, but after one half hearted attempt, accepted the fact that I was not the Incredible Hulk. Then I remembered that there were a few wire hangers in Oliver’s closet. DUH – all I had to do was to use the end of a wire to poke the little hole in the door knob and spring the lock. Chris showed me how to do this in our old apartment when I used to worry about Oliver accidentally locking himself in the bathroom.

Within a minute, I had a red-faced, hysterical Oliver in my lap and equally upset twins climbing all over us. Once I had everyone somewhat calmed down, Oliver started dragging us out of the evil room that had kept us away from him for the TEN MINUTES that this drama probably took to unfold. I knew that only one thing could snap everyone out of their hysteria. So I asked, “hey – who wants ice cream?” And then all was golden.

While the twins should have been settling down to sleep and Oliver should have been preparing for his own bath, we sat around the kids’ table exclaiming over the miracle that is ice cream while traumatic events quickly disappeared from our blessedly fickle short term memories.

Good times.